News

Army staff sergeant Robert Bales will plead guilty next week to murdering 16 Afghan villagers in early morning raids last year. The plea allows the soldier from western Washington’s Joint-Base Lewis McCord to avoid the death penalty. John Henry Browne, an attorney for Bales, says his client will detail his own version of the crimes as part of the plea deal.

The Oregon teenager accused of plotting an attack on his high school has obsessive-compulsive disorder brought on in a rare way: a strep infection. That's according to his mother. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed today that an Oregon field is contaminated with a genetically modified strain of wheat.

Tuesday in Spokane people came together to honor three Air Force airmen who died earlier this month. They were members of the 93rd Air Refueling Squadron from Fairchild Air Force Base. Paige Browning has more on the memorial.

West Albany High School students are praising one of their classmates as a hero. Truman Templeton sounded the alarm that a fellow student was plotting what officials call "mass murder" at his high school. Seventeen-year-old Grant Acord is being held on $2 million bail after his initial court appearance Tuesday. Salem Correspondent Chris Lehman reports.

Environmental groups have gone to court again to stop the export of liquefied natural gas from the Port of Coos Bay.

Coos Waterkeeper, the Sierra Club and other groups filed a petition with Oregon’s Court of Appeals Tuesday. They’re asking the court to reverse a judge’s decision last month to allow the port to dredge a waterway deep enough for large vessels that could haul LNG and bulk commodities like coal.

Mid-June: that’s how soon residents may see a temporary fix to the Interstate-5 bridge over the Skagit River near Mount Vernon, Wash. It collapsed last week when a truck hit an overhead support beam. Two vehicles fell into the river. No one was seriously injured. It is a serious situation – but in the aftermath, one T-shirt company is throwing a little fun into the mix.

A 17-year-old student from Albany, Ore., appeared in court Tuesday afternoon on charges of plotting to bomb his high school. On the first day back for students, the sign in front of the campus says simply, “West Albany High School is family.”

After last December’s mass shootings in Oregon and Connecticut, Democrats and Republicans in the Oregon legislature called for increased funding for mental health care. Now, there’s a proposal under discussion that would expand such programs in a big way, but it remains caught up in a debate over how to fund it. Salem Correspondent Chris Lehman spoke with one lawmaker for whom mental health care is a very personal issue.

An Oregon teenager will be in court Tuesday on charges that he was planning to set off bombs at his high school. The court appearance comes on the same day that students return to West Albany High School for the first time since police uncovered the alleged plot. Correspondent Chris Lehman reports.